Voice Search Optimization: The Future of Search Marketing

Early search engine marketing was based on textual queries. With the introduction of voice search, SEO has unique challenges to deal with. The current post is illustrating what voice search is, how it accomplished, and how it could be the future of search engine marketing in the coming days.

Introduction:

Voice Search Becoming a Trend

Businesses have websites and mobile apps as virtual shops. They used to strive for traffic on their virtual shops. Natural traffic from the search engines is the biggest and stable source for the businesses.

Today every palm has a smartphone, which is a top device in the list used to carry natural searches. The interesting thing about smart mobiles is that those have a voice assistant, be it Siri, Cortana, or Amazon Alexa.

Mobile users used to refrain from typing due to space constraints. The inconvenience leads mobile users to use voice assistant frequently for carrying searches on various search engines for their myriads of needs.

Apart from the voice assistants, the latest browsers support voice-based search feature to carry a voice search irrespective of the device type. So, desktops, laptops, and other computing devices with browsers enable users to enjoy voice search like a luxury.

• Therefore, “Location World” stated in its recent survey that more than 40% of adults are using voice search instead of typing the texts. Moreover, MindMeld declared that out of a total number of voice searches, nearly 60% of voice search users adopted it just last year.
• A statistic on Siri indicates that 19% of iOS users use it on daily bases. Similarly, Cortana of Microsoft has 133 million monthly users. Geomarketing.com have found that 42% of total respondents admitted that voice-enabled devices are vital for their life!
• For businesses, CTA declared on Hubspot that one out of four customers had used voice assistants in holiday shopping in 2017.

Present & Future of Voice Search Devices

We know without the integration of voice recognition software, we cannot enable any computing device to help users in voice search. So, let’s know about the most trendy and used voice search devices or software available in the market today.

Google Assistant

Do you know the presence of Google Assistant is on more than 400 million devices? Nearly 70% of requests come from voice search on the Google search engine, and Google Assistant has a lion share in it. Now, users can speak natural languages rather than typing queries with essential keywords.

Google Home

It is a voice search device with the additional power of AI and associated technologies. Therefore, more than 5.4 million models have sold in 2018 alone. Its success rate is 81% for responding to the queries based on voice searches.

Amazon Echo

It is an industry leader for marketing campaigns. Amazon Echo has acquired 64% of success rate to answer the queries correctly. Its selling figure is more than 4.1 million devices in a quarter only.

Amazon Alexa

It has sold more than 100 million devices. Despite the presence of a voice assistant in the hands of Amazon Alexa buyers, selling is continuously increasing.

Apple Devices

Most of the iOS devices like iPhone and iPad have Siri as a voice assistant and success rate of Siri in the market is the highest with a 99% success rate in providing a precise response of the queries.

Android Devices

It is a latecomer in the voice search market but boasting with a share of 25% of Google searches with the best user experiences.

Microsoft Cortana

It is an AI-powered voice search device with higher satisfaction rates. It has 133 million monthly users, and 23% of users are using it on a daily basis.

We have observed that people are interested in buying voice search devices, and selling is steadily increasing for almost all devices listed or not listed here. It indicates that the voice search has a bright future.

Future of Voice Search in Different Domains

The intensity of usages of voice search is greatly differing from one business domain or industry/category to another. Let’s explore the trendiest industries for voice search and know about its possible future.

Voice Search in Automobile or Automotive Industry

We are heading towards driver-less vehicles, and voice search is a key component of its command. It can help in navigation, accidents, and providing useful info in the contexts of the riders. Therefore, voice-first technology integrations are a priority in upcoming models of cars and other small to large vehicles.

Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Industries

The language barrier is the biggest hurdle in the hospitality industry. Travelers and tourists feel great inconvenience in alienated lands. Voice search has capabilities to provide translation functionality to the searchers and ease their life a lot. Voice-based guidance services in apps and voice ordering enable apps can help such industries a lot in coming years.

Healthcare Industry

Voice search helps healthcare staff to find data, references, reports, and vital information useful in day-to-day tasks. Now, voice search is ubiquitous. It means doctors and others can access information, data, and even virtual guidance from the Internet as well as an intranet, or private cloud network quickly using voice search.

They need not spare their hands to access smart devices and wearable devices also help them in any condition even during operations or driving an ambulance. Voice search helps patients with neural diseases & depression to come out from loneliness impacts.

Finance and Banking

At present, the banking app provides services to the bank account holders to retrieve info regarding their account status and transactions. However, tech advancement is waiting to enable voice-based transactions with biometric security measures.

Future of Voice Search in the Internet Marketing

Our Internet marketing strategies are predominantly focusing on search engine optimization tactics. Before voice search, SEO experts were focusing on textual queries where the dominance of keywords is a well-known thing.

In voice search, we are using the natural language and ask long-tailed question instead of typing keyword-rich queries. For instance, if you are in San Jose, California and wish to know about the best continental restaurant for your next dinner, how will you carry text-based search and voice search?

For textural search, you have to type two important keywords. One is indicating the location and another your aim of the search. It means you have to type-” best restaurants in San Jose.” In voice search, you will say, “Hi Siri, what is the best restaurant nearby me?”

Now, voice search software is working in combination with AI, NLP, and Deep Learning. Thereby, voice search software will retrieve your location data to fix your location and run a search for a restaurant in your vicinity.

The changes in search approaches and tactics are inevitable to prepare content, Meta Data, and doing SEO-friendly coding. Let’s see in brief what changes are needed to meet the future requirements for voice search.

Prepare Content for Featured Snippets:

In SERPs, featured snippets display in a box as a precise summary of the query run on a search engine Google. It is the best place to get answers to your search too. Now, the voice assistant grabs that content and translate into a voice-based answer.

To enable your content for appearance in voice search results, you need to prepare content accordingly. Title with H-tag, content with main keywords, and most important is with ToV. So, a content writer has to write content in a completely colloquial manner. Thereby, when the content read loudly, the tone of language must find natural and flow smoothly.

The next thing is Structured Markup Data, which is responsible for generating featured snippets in SERPs. You have to learn how to apply schema markup in your web page code (back-end) after front-end content writing.

Focus on Long-tail Keywords & Key-phrases

Voice search is based on audible questions in one or two long or short sentences. Here, SEO people have chances to include long-tailed keywords or key phrases.

Write Long & Rich Content

• Voice search optimization needs long, informative, and scanning friendly content.
• Your content must be around 2,000 words with enough headings and sub-headings using a range of H-tags in the proper hierarchy.
• Use lucid language using completely natural tones.
• Use bullets and short para in your content with short sentences to improve readability and comprehensibility.
• Try to include question phrases maximally to enable search engine to provide queries for voice search.
• Your website or mobile application must have the design as well as content suitable to provide voice responses. Images must have relevancy and Meta Data to help in voice search for delivering accurate image search results.

Who Can Help In Voice Search Marketing?

We know that VOS (Voice Search Optimization) is somewhat different and advanced practice than SEO. Deep knowledge of search algorithm pertaining to voice search is an inevitable flair to attend VOS campaign. M-connect Solutions has VOS expertise to attend various VOS campaigns with success.

About Hemant Parmar

Hemant Parmar is an eCommerce expert and a keen Magento consultant who specializes in meeting the needs of businesses in the e-commerce space. Years in the eCommerce market make him a perfect choice for sharing his expertise on eCommerce and Magento 2 development. He believes that customers need to be met no matter how challenging it might be.

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